Willburn Cemetery

Duane's take

The way the official marker tells it, here's the story of Willburn Cemetery as Duane understands it. Out in southwestern Tarrant County, there's a piece of ground that's been holding the memory of a family, and a whole community, for well over a hundred years. They call it Willburn Cemetery, and the story starts, as so many Texas stories do, with a long journey from somewhere else.

Edward Willburn was born in 1805, and his wife Nancy, born Overton, somewhere around 1811, came out of the upper south. Now the upper south is a broad stretch of country, but wherever they started, they ended up here, in what would become southwestern Tarrant County, sometime in the 1850s. That's frontier territory in the 1850s.

No guarantees, no safety net. Just land, sky, and the work in front of you. They put down roots deep enough that when people started dying, as people will, there was already ground to bury them in.

The earliest marked grave we know of dates to 1867. And here's the thing about that grave that stays with you: it belongs to an infant. The child of William and Cassandra Willburn, she was born a Williams before she married, that baby is the first soul with a marked resting place in this cemetery.

Eighteen sixty-seven. Two years after the Civil War closed. The world was still raw.

Now, Edward himself lived until 1882, Nancy until 1887. They saw a lot of Texas become Texas. And many of the people buried around them are their descendants; generation after generation of Willburns folded back into this same soil.

Among those buried here is Rachael M. Willburn, she became a Snyder, and she did something worth remembering. She donated property for a church, a school, and a cemetery in Benbrook.

Three things a community needs to call itself a community. That's no small gesture. Then there's Church Willburn.

Now that is a name that sounds like it was made for Texas, and the man lived up to it. Church Willburn worked as a cowboy and rode on several cattle drives back in the 1860s. You think about what that meant: long miles, hard weather, the particular loneliness and camaraderie of a drive, and you get a sense of the life this man led before he came to rest here.

And the Civil War veterans. The marker doesn't give us their names one by one, but they're here. Men who lived through that conflict and then came out to the southwestern edge of Tarrant County to build something afterward.

Willburn Cemetery is a pioneer cemetery (the marker says so plainly), and what that word pioneer really means, when you stand there and think about it, is people who arrived before the infrastructure did. Before the roads, before the county filled in around them. Edward and Nancy Willburn came in the 1850s.

Their children and grandchildren stayed. A baby was buried here in 1867. A cowboy who rode the drives of the 1860s is here.

A woman who gave land so her neighbors could pray and learn and bury their own is here. Southwestern Tarrant County grew up around this family, and this cemetery is where that story is kept.

What the marker says

Many of the individuals buried in this pioneer cemetery are descendants of Edward Willburn (1805-82) and his wife Nancy (Overton) (ca. 1811-87), immigrants from the upper south who settled here in the 1850s. The earliest marked grave, dated 1867, is for the infant child of William and Cassandra (Williams) Willburn. Also interred here: Rachael M. (Wilburn) Snyder, donor of property for a church, school, and cemetery in Benbrook; Church Willburn, a cowboy on several cattle drives in the 1860s; Civil War veterans; and other pioneers of southwestern Tarrant County. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986